Further education lecturers across Scotland are taking industrial action today, the third time in as many years that we have been forced to leave our classes and take to the streets.

The current dispute is over pay - lecturers have had no cost-of-living pay rise since April 2016, and management’s final offer, amounting to a consolidated rise of less than 1 per cent per year, was overwhelmingly rejected in October 2018.

We wrote to management back in October inviting them to make a new offer based on public sector pay policy and the award already made to support staff working in the FE sector. At our last negotiation meeting in December, we reiterated this request and in an attempt to progress matters, submitted a revised pay claim based on this.

Despite assurances that we would meet “early in January”, the management side has refused to meet until after the first day of strike action - a cynical move that some might say shows utter disregard for FE students and contempt for their own teaching staff.

Government silence

The Scottish government’s silence on the matter is in sharp contrast to the efforts made by local government umbrella body Cosla and the government via the SNCT to arrange meetings and avert strike action in the school sector - while negotiations have not yet produced an acceptable offer, sitting down face-to-face is a good start.

EIS-FELA members across the country welcomed the Scottish government’s manifesto commitment in 2011 of a return to national bargaining for the sector, and we will fight tooth and nail to defend national bargaining. We are one sector; we have equal pay and we are edging closer to a national set of terms and conditions - but we will not accept a pay freeze for any of our members.

The stalemate at the National Joint Negotiating Committee is not a result of trade union militancy - we have spent two years coaxing and cajoling management into negotiations on a cost of living pay rise, and are asking only for the Scottish government’s own public sector pay policy - but is symptomatic of a more fundamental failure of leadership in the sector.

Huge change

The sector has gone through huge change in the last decade, with mergers reducing the number of colleges from 44 in 2010 to 26. An Audit Scotland report in 2016 noted that the number of FTE staff declined by 9 per cent in the period from 2011-12 - 2013-14, and while this has risen again since, thousands of experienced, qualified lecturers have been lost to the sector and replaced - if at all - by part-time temporary staff.

On far too many occasions, principals and senior managers have viewed this seismic change not as an opportunity to develop new and improved learning and teaching environments, but as a smash and grab raid, whether to build a new empire or bail out with an inflated payoff. Those bewailing the cost of harmonisation of pay and T&C for lecturing staff may reflect a moment on the vast sums of public money poured down the drain of college mergers.

Poor industrial relations in the Scottish FE sector were not caused by national bargaining - they predate this and can be traced back to incorporation in 1993. But industrial relations will only sour further with strike action; that this strike action has not been averted by timely negotiations is shameful.

A future-ready sector

EIS-FELA has made it clear at every meeting that we want a negotiated settlement. We are committed to building an FE sector which is future-ready and uses the full depth and breadth of skills, knowledge and experience our members’ bring to their classrooms. It is beyond ironic that the launch of the revised Lecturer Professional Standards has been postponed due to industrial action.

In their Statement of Ambition, Colleges Scotland has stated that it will strive “to be the best employer in Scotland’s public sector, investing in our staff’s future by providing the highest possible standards of training, development and reward package”.  All we have asked for is a cost of living pay rise in line with public sector pay policy.  So, if it is to start delivering on this ambition, the first step must be to commit to meaningful negotiations and avoid further disruption to the sector.